I think it would be a good idea to provide information on what actions gain/lose piety with deities. Looking at the wiki, a lot of the information is out of data or untested. It will always become obsolete every time you make a change anyway.It seems we have to do a lot of un-fun in-game research (restarting many many times) before we can make an informed choice as to whether to follow a certain deity. Monster stats are visible, the exact effects of items are visible. Why so cagey about the gods?

Just to stress this point. This is not a minor issue for me. I cannot play this game with the free time I have available without access to accurate information about the gods.

Another problem with this secretive approach is we can't report bugs if we don't know how things are supposed to work.I just got cursed by Tikki Tooki after I killed a monster without taking a single hit. It was the second monster I killed in that dungeon and I had not been hit once. Is this a bug? No idea. I don't know what Tikki Tooki punishes you for.

As soon as you worship a god another panel gets added to your stack, it's temporary for now and looks rather horrible, but it's a log of all the god actions you've inspired.

Gods are mysterious when you first play for a reason, even once we have the nice shiny codex (think integrated wiki, kinda) in the game, we don't want to tell you about gods from the word go. You have to discover what they do through playing... Yes, this sometimes means you lose a round, but so does accidentally clicking a higher level monster. God strategies and knowledge are a sign of mastery of the game's first set of systems, we want players to feel like they're uncovering awesome new knowledge and being smart when they figure out how to use a particular god. That's what they're all about.

Plus roguelikes traditionally have unidentified item drops, the gods are our take on a non-full-knowledge system. It's just that you learn it over multiple plays instead of during one, longer, play session. Frankly, if we simply gave you everything about the gods up front, they would lose a lot of their value to the game.

Except, in actual practice, they won't be mysterious when you first play, because there will be a wiki detailing all of the information (and to a much lesser extent they're not mysterious even now if you look hard enough). You should expect people to read the wiki because the whole point of the game is making careful strategic decisions and each god has the potential to ruin half a dozen dungeon runs before you understand everything there is to understand about them. Trying to guess what the gods like or dislike by trial and error is just an annoying detour from the core gameplay, and not even reliable, since you can't possibly guess every possibility. (For example, +1 piety from Glowing Guardian, only if you kill a Wraith, Vampire, Zombie, Serpent, Imp, or Warlock, of course, and only if they're equal or higher level, unless you finish them with BURNDAYRAZ... of course. This example is from Alpha.)

(Tangentially: If you weren't providing the in-game wiki it would be even worse because a player is not going to necessarily remember relevant details, if they, like me, play every now and then. This is frustrating.)

dislekcia wrote:even once we have the nice shiny codex (think integrated wiki, kinda) in the game, we don't want to tell you about gods from the word go. You have to discover what they do through playing...

This is a fine and good solution. I would like to suggest that for gods you've unlocked, you list the number of facts about the god that the player has not yet discovered, thus giving them something to work toward and eventually granting them confidence that the god isn't going to surprise them with some bizarre hit way down the road. Again, this is information that the player will have any way if they just inconvenience themselves a little more.

dislekcia wrote:Yes, this sometimes means you lose a round, but so does accidentally clicking a higher level monster.

That's another thing I would suggest changing, and I know a number of other people have suggested it here on the forums that it confirm before letting you make an attack that will kill you (unless you dodge). There's a reason chess forces the players to play into checkmate instead just letting their king be taken due to an oversight.

dislekcia wrote:God strategies and knowledge are a sign of mastery of the game's first set of systems, we want players to feel like they're uncovering awesome new knowledge and being smart when they figure out how to use a particular god. That's what they're all about.

Plus roguelikes traditionally have unidentified item drops, the gods are our take on a non-full-knowledge system. It's just that you learn it over multiple plays instead of during one, longer, play session. Frankly, if we simply gave you everything about the gods up front, they would lose a lot of their value to the game.

One of the things I appreciate about DD in contrast with roguelikes is that, with the exception of god information (in the beta--eventually there will be full info on a wiki somewhere anyway), it doesn't generally require memorization or note-taking, from previous games. Such notes are really just spoilers anyway since the represent knowledge about the game that cannot be achieved within a specific game session itself.

Were you expecting a coherent message? Alweth does not deal with such trifles. Ignore him or watch the thread get locked!

The Avatar wrote:I don't think if you misclick you should be saved, because that completely goes against the roguelike part of the game.

How so? Most roguelikes that I know about try to double-check before letting players do something that's certain to kill them. For example, some roguelikes will either make you confirm if you want to do something like step into lava or deep water when it will kill you, or they don't even let you do it.

In any case, even if it is a roguelikey feature, I see no reason why DD should be beholden to that particular annoying feature when it does away with so many other much more essentially roguelike features, like complete dependence on the RNG, traditional RPG elements, etc.

Were you expecting a coherent message? Alweth does not deal with such trifles. Ignore him or watch the thread get locked!

I suppose, but DD is not supposed to be a forgiving game. If you take Dracul in the crypt it's not going to say. "Are You sure, there is a lot of Undead and he hates it when you kill them." Or the Earthmother in Ick Swamp "Warning: You are about to get so corroded you'll wish you had never tried this dungeon."

Not to be mean or to hate on your suggestion, but DD was never a forgiving game. The Alpha made sure of that.

When the UI says, "Result: Death" you know the player either isn't trying to win anymore or made a mistake. When you, as a UI designer can predict that a certain action is almost always a misclick or mistake, you should give them a chance not to do it.

This has nothing to do with the game being forgiving or not. Avoiding obvious deaths like that has nothing to do with knowledge, skill, or strategy. All it takes is an extra half a second or so to check each time. In other words, it's a waste of time. It's ironic when you're dominating a dungeon and you accidentally click on the wrong enemy and the game tells you, "Don't worry. It's a hard game." That may be true, but it has nothing to do with my death just now.

Were you expecting a coherent message? Alweth does not deal with such trifles. Ignore him or watch the thread get locked!

Alweth wrote:When the UI says, "Result: Death" you know the player either isn't trying to win anymore or made a mistake. When you, as a UI designer can predict that a certain action is almost always a misclick or mistake, you should give them a chance not to do it.

This has nothing to do with the game being forgiving or not. Avoiding obvious deaths like that has nothing to do with knowledge, skill, or strategy. All it takes is an extra half a second or so to check each time. In other words, it's a waste of time. It's ironic when you're dominating a dungeon and you accidentally click on the wrong enemy and the game tells you, "Don't worry. It's a hard game." That may be true, but it has nothing to do with my death just now.

Completely and fully agreed. The only reason you'd ever click on an enemy whose result is DEATH is if you have dodge or are trying to kill yourself, and both are extremely rare.

It's also inconsistent with Bloodmages being unable to quaff mana potions if the HP cost would kill them, or throwing up a warning with red text when you try to desecrate JJ (even if you've never desecrated him before, and therefore shouldn't know what the penalty is).

I did think it was odd when I saw a warning message for JJ's altar desecration. I know it's a pretty risky punishment, but so are some of the other ones, like loosing all your items, or enemy resistances up, they're all bad but don't have warning messages, so that warning needs to go, in my opinion.